A nation addicted to adventure

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Australia is in love with risk, contests, adrenalin and winning,
writes Paul Sheehan.

The running of the bulls takes place in early July in Pamplona,
the Basque town in northern Spain. They've been holding this ritual
for more than 400 years, but in recent decades a new tradition has
evolved there - the running of the Australians.

Lauren Bowey, 21, of Adelaide, jogged through the streets of
Pamplona on July 5, the day before the bulls were let loose, along
with a group of others wearing nothing but a pair of horns and a
red basque scarf. The naked protest was meant to draw attention to
the treatment of the bulls, maimed and killed during the bullfight
festival.

The previous year, another young Australian woman, Karen More,
24, was one of three people who suffered head injuries sustained
during the running of the bulls. The year before that, three people
were gored and, once again, one was an Australian, Nicolas Headlam,
29. In 2002, another three people were hospitalised after being
gored. Yet again, one was an Australian.

Detect a pattern? Young Australians gravitate to the most
dangerous rite in Europe, in disproportionate numbers, and with
disproportionate bravado. One travel company in London which
services Aussie backpackers proudly accentuated the danger in its
ads for Pamplona this year: "Every year many people are injured and
some killed."

Actually, 13 people have been killed since records began in
1924. The last fatality occurred 10 years ago, a 22-year-old
American, but there have been thousands of casualties. It is one of
many, many ways Australians manage to put themselves in harm's way
for a dare, for the adrenalin, all over the world, all the time. On
July 21, an Australian, Darcy Zoitsas, a veteran BASE jumper
(jumping off mountains or tall structures, with a parachute) leapt
off the Kjerag clifftop in Norway, and became the ninth person in
10 years to die off Kjerag when his parachute failed to open.
Another Australian, Roland "Slim" Simpson, died in a BASE jump off
the Jinmao Tower in Shanghai last October. The list just keeps
ticking over.

Australians are, per capita, probably the world's most
adventurous travellers. We are also a nation of gamblers. This
appetite for adventure is part of the national character. It is
reflected in Australia's wildly disproportionate role in world
sport. In the ultimate world sporting competition, the Olympics,
only four countries have won more medals than Australia since the
Helsinki games in 1952, and two of those countries, the USSR and
East Germany, don't exist any more. This success extends over
decades, across many different sports. Australia finished among the
top 10 medal-winners at the games of 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968,
1972, 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. When population is taken into
account, the performance is even more remarkable. Among the top 10
medal-winners, Australia finished as the top nation, in medals per
capita, in 1956 (Melbourne), 1960 (Rome), 1996 (Atlanta), 2000
(Sydney) and 2004 (Athens).

Other countries, much bigger and many just as wealthy, yearn for
the success we seem to take for granted. In Britain, the prospect
of England defeating Australia in an Ashes cricket series has
become the biggest sports story of the year. England have not come
close to winning the Ashes for 18 years, losing eight consecutive
Test series, and last week, when it appeared they might take a 2-1
lead in this series, thousands were locked out of the Old Trafford
ground in Manchester as they sought to see the final day of the
third Test. Tickets for all five days of the final two Tests are
sold out. The English want what we've had for a long time, and they
want it badly.

While the Australians were blithely starting the Ashes series by
winning the first Test, the Australian team was competing at the
2005 World Swimming Championships in Montreal, and finished ahead
of every nation except the United States on the medal table. At the
same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, in the world's
greatest cycling event, the Tour de France, 10 Australians finished
the gruelling race and won eight top-three places in the 21 stage
races. Few nations did better.

And all this was just in July. A generation of Australians
probably doesn't appreciate just how wealthy this country has
become in sporting terms, which may account for the hysteria
surrounding the national rugby union team, the Wallabies, who lost
a fourth consecutive Test on Saturday night. They are on the way to
Australia's worst run of Test defeats in a generation. When they
lose again against New Zealand in two weeks, the wailing and
gnashing will be intense.

But let's have some context. Apart from the wealth of Australian
talent locked away in rugby league, the Wallabies are in the
process of playing the best two rugby teams in the world for an
absurd six consecutive Tests. Against anyone else, this
ill-conceived run would not be happening. Even worse, the
invisible, gormless leadership of the Australian Rugby Union has
decided to debauch the greatest thing rugby has in this country,
the Tri Nations series, by prostituting it into a repetitious,
mystique-destroying nine-match season that will turn the Wallabies
into a club team, sucking oxygen from every other level of a
grassroots game, and embarrass them in any bad year such as this
one. The same leadership scheduled Saturday night's crucial Test
against the South Africans in Perth instead of Sydney, making it
almost a home game for the Springboks.

Having such a low-wattage leadership is exacerbated when the
national coach is addicted to a captain who can't run, can't kick,
can't pass and can't think - at least not beyond a rut formed long
ago in Canberra. So while the critics have a point, the din of
outrage surrounding the Wallabies, the third best rugby team in the
world, is the din of a nation grown fat on the spoils of sporting
adventure.